Well of course, money too. There will presumably be enough for them both to get ridiculously rich. Several times over.

Baking progresses too. Eva can follow a recipe, and so if Nick comes back in about an hour, he should find that she has cooked cupcakes!

Cupcakes: Are delicious.

He attempts to divulge the principles by which his synthetic fuel machine will work. It's probably a good idea to know what it is you'll be trying to sell, and the broad strokes aren't too complicated since she can cover any nosy questions with 'trade secret' or 'proprietary method' or other buzzwords.

So long as he's okay with explaining it thoroughly, starting from the more basic concepts and working up, he should find that she's actually keeping up! She'll ask quite a few questions, and the higher level stuff might take a while to sink in without the contextual knowledge, but she can definitely keep track of the broad strokes. Of course she can respond with 'trade secret', and she almost certainly will, but it's still interesting to find out about how the machine actually works.

The broad strokes can be summarized as: It performs a miracle of carefully-controlled chemistry when supplied with electricity, and also works as a proof of concept for the hydrocarbon batteries that are trickier to make. Quality, safe-for-cars gasoline from water and carbon, either from carbon dioxide in the air or from ash, and electricity. The cost works out to something like $2.25/gal at industrial electricity prices, but they can throw a huge fuss about its eco-friendliness, and the price will go way down if they build a fairy-powerplant that produces something on the order of gigawatts in exchange for a steady stream of cupcakes and trinkets.

That is totally ridiculous! It's brilliant.

My, what a fortunate arrival Nick has been.

There's more where that came from.

The next thing on his list is more advanced electronics and/or shiny new AI systems and the like, but you need a bit of a reputation to get something like Intel or Comcast to listen to you. Medicine and medical equipment is up after that, because it will almost certainly take contacts and capital to make the stuff above-board.

He could announce some random advance in quantum field theory and hope for a Nobel Prize but that feels like cheating... Could he win the Randi Prize? A million is in the bucket once they get big, but it could smooth things over in the short term.

The Randi Prize? Is that... the supernatural thing?

It is! That definitely sounds like a good way to get their start-up project kickstarted.

Apparently there's a form to fill out and then a wait period. Nick fills it out and resumes tinkering. Now that the shiny demonstration unit is working so they can show off to anyone who listens to them, he's making tools that will be used to make tools that will be used to make tools that will be used to make the actual products.

Of course he is. That's actually kinda cool.

Meanwhile, Eva has been looking around for people and organizations on the internet who might be interested in a demonstration of the product. It's not been long, so she's not actually made much headway, but she's started!

He hits a bit of a lull in productivity sometimes, when something's running that can't be sped up. He asks to be returned home for a couple hours once, but otherwise spends a lot of this time discussing the science and future plans with Eva.

There may be occasional flirting, though he doesn't try to escalate.

The occasional flirting is reciprocated, but Eva also doesn't try to escalate at this stage.

Eventually, they have a few responses! Unfortunately, two are along the lines of 'don't waste our time with this', and the other one is tentatively interested but isn't actually very high-profile, so it might be better to wait to see if they get any better options. Sigh. She keeps looking around for other places that seem like they might be more open to innovation, and tries to persuade the other groups that no, she's not lying.

Nick thinks they should go ahead and show off to the low-profile company, and just yammer something about 'investigating our options' to stall them and wait for higher profile clients.

Unless they can get a major tech-based social media person interested? He recalls that kind of thing was just starting to really take off in the 2010s. There has to be one or two sciencey blogs or video shows that might accept a shiny new toy. Not that he doubts she's trying, but it's a bit hard to believe nobody is interested.

It is kinda hard to believe, or at least annoying to believe, but they are – basically – nobodies saying that they have a revolutionary product. It's somewhat farfetched.

She had been looking for investors as opposed to just publicity, and therefore didn't focus on the blog-and-videosphere as much as she should have. Turns out there are people who are interested in trying it out and getting information on it out there! In the future, she shall strive to do better. Now, when would they like to meet with some of these people? Literally as soon as possible? She thinks it's probably that, but she'll check with Nick just in case.

'Literally as soon as possible' is correct. Nick is faster than an airplane.

Literally as soon as possible is the option she picks! Unfortunately, they can't do 'immediately', but how does tomorrow morning sound?

Tomorrow morning will have to do, then. He spends the night hopped up on coffee making tweaks to the thing.

She spends the night sleeping, as humans do, but she's up bright and early the next day!

Where is this internet person? Are they local-ish, or will Nick have to fly below a thousand feet halfway across the country to avoid detection by air force radar technicians?

They're not local local, but they're in the same state. Here's an address and directions from a nearby landmark.

Whoosh?

Whoosh! He lets a small part of the wind hit them, this time, it's more fun that way.

His wings are hidden when they navigate to the internet person's house.

Whoosh!

And eventually they arrive. Hello, internet person. Watch Eva be charmingly interesting at you.

Internet person answers the door and invites them in. He serves coffee and lets Eva apply charm and small talk for a while, but soon asks to see the devices.

Eva's happy to show them off! She repeats the bits of Nick's explanation that she understood fully and feels are relevant. Do you have anything to add, Nick? Would you maybe like to demonstrate them?

The internet person cuts her explanation off. "Actually, let me start recording now?" A microphone and a little camera is deployed. "There we go."

Nick only has a couple things to add or clarify. He talks about how they're going to scale it up, and the problem of needing rare materials as catalysts.

Internet person catches on that Nick is the mastermind behind the device, but then Eva is more photogenic and also has better enthusiasm in her voice so she keeps the spotlight.